The Goodbye Man (9 page)

I want look into
the small glass pane of the door where she is resting. I had a short chat with the doctor and she will live but needs time for her body to recover, but it will recover. Her mind, I am afraid to know just how fractured it might be. As I open my eyes to look, I am met with Mateo, his mouth on hers. His hands are pawing at her still body, touching her naked breast as if they are his - the quiet is completely gone and the violent noise inside my head explodes as I open the door and drag him out by his stupid long hair. “Do you need an English lesson, Mateo? What does watch mean?! She is not to be touched! I will fucking kill you. I will kill you, boy! Don’t push me. I shut up about your fucking deranged needs, but she is MINE!” I let him go before I do kill him.

“Who is she, old man? Why was she worth saving? Huh?” he asks me, goading, pushing. His soft voice is a weapon against me.

“She is no one, boy.. No one. Go find Juan and lock him up. He’s running around like he owns this place.” He is about to talk back when I sucker punch him in the jaw, “Next time I will take your teeth out.” I spit on him before I turn around to her. The boy is more effort than he is worth some days. I sit beside her and cover her body with the sheet. I cannot look at her naked body - it is wrong. I allow myself to remember. I remember her little eyes where she hid. I always asked where mi amor
was. Marta was something special, it was not love. No, love is loud, it roars and rages. I cannot have noise near me, it draws attention. I need quiet - Marta was a quiet release at the end of my day. No noise. Relief - but her, Svetlana, she is roaring and raging war against my silent solitude and I hate her for it.

Through fire and pain, the devil would make his claim.

“This is not your goodbye,
mi amor, not yet. Come on,”
a deep, Spanish voice lulls to me.

The familiarity of his reverberations pulls at my heart, or what I have left of it. I feel cocooned in safety as the murmurs of the man’s voice dances around like serenades to my broken soul. Is he trying to help me? Heal me? Girls like me can’t be healed or helped. A part of me wants to offer him comfort because his voice is full of sorrow, but my arms are stationary at my sides and I cannot move them. I wish I could wrap my hands around his neck and pull his kind body into me, to warm me, to undo me, to make me feel
alive.
But my brain is not communicating with my body. My eyelids feel like a ton of bricks are weighing them down.

Is this my heaven?

Is this my glorious goodbye?

I try to take a sharp intake of air into my lungs, but something wicked is holding me back. Not painful, just disturbing, sharp, shady reminders of what brought me here still lingering beside me like an unwelcome, diseased beast.

The softness from the man with no name leaves me; my lifeline, my pulse, the reasoning for my tiny shard of a soul to cling onto hope waits to cut itself away as protection abandons me once more. Again, I am taught that decency never lasts and bad intentions are all that surround girls like me. It is burnt into the deep, dark, scary crevices of my dying head.

Maybe this is part of it all; the feeling of a simple, sincere embrace before coldness rests on my bruised and broken body. My mind drifts off to a memory, my first memory, one that I wish I would never remember. I suppose this is how it works when you are dying. Life flashes before you, though I didn’t have much of a life. It was below extraordinary. I was just a meaningless girl who didn’t have a name to most. A girl who didn’t warrant a hello, or even a goodbye for that matter. I merely existed for hate. Some are birthed for love. Others for hate. That was me. To sustain the unthinkable. Some people are built for it. I suppose I was one of those people.

I wish to forget, yet it still haunts me as I prepare to take my last breaths. No matter how hard I try to run from it, it still chases me like a bad dream. The grisly acts flash before me, red, bloody, and violent.

Marta’s disheveled blonde curls are turned red from blood. So much blood. Her forehead is split open and little bits of brain matter litter the dirty pavement where she met her death behind the apartment we used to call home. Thanks to Pavel’s disgusting boot and fists, the only person that loved me is gone.

I try to forget as I teeter on the edge between life and death, but her face tantalizes me like the worst kind of nightmare. Why did Pavel hate her so much? He threw her to be eaten alive every single day by ferocious wolves, just as I was. Like mother, like daughter, we met the same kind of fate because we were trapped by the ugly. Gloominess followed us like an ominous cloud; we wouldn’t have been able to leave it even if we tried. There is no escape from what we live, not alive at least. The only way to leave is by death.

Why? A word I choose to not use, because there is never a fair answer.

Marta’s eyes stare at me like a dolly I always wanted. Beautiful, glassy, still, lifeless. Her parted lips seep the same kind of red liquid running from the gaping wound on her head that once supplied her body with a futile life. I watched my mother take it. She wanted to die. She wanted a way out of this hell on earth. She was a lamb that couldn’t survive the famished lions. Her life provided no faith for the better, because people like us do not change. We play the role we are given until we die.

My head aches as images of my mother dash before me again while I watch her receive repeated punches to the gut and smacks to the face. I see her being thrown over a dirty bed by one of Pavel’s drunk men to be fucked in the middle of a room. Yes, memories flood my dying brain. Why do I have to remember these things now? Why?

Madness swims about wildly in my head. I wish my body would make up its mind between life and death. Limbo is the worst place to be as anxiety consumes me, settling in every cell that I have. My mind sees the image of the man with no name sitting in the corner with a smug look on his face, puffing on his cigarette with those lips of his as he watches my mother get fucked up the ass by a Russian piece of shit.

Who is he? Is this a dream? Is everything melting together? I can’t tell the difference between reality, death, and a dream. I want to be free from the confines of this madness. From pain. From hopelessness. I want to leave the life that has molded me into a girl not capable of feeling. Because I felt once when my eyes met
his.
But I am falling and it is too late.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“You going to make it, girl. Don’t try and speak,” a deep, Polish accent says to me.

I can’t open my eyes. They are far too heavy, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. The flicker of fight is still alive and burning. I am angry as hell for that. Bright lights shine through my eyelids and the buzzing of florescent lights is giving me a headache. I try to open my mouth, but my chapped lips are stuck together and it feels like I have a million dry cotton balls in my mouth. I don’t try to talk, not because I trust the woman, but because I am used to being quiet and not using my words. I am good at following orders.

I try again to move my lips and successfully unclasp them from each other. I swallow, but no saliva is in my mouth. My scratchy voice unknowingly catches in my throat. I feel like I have eaten sand paper and my mouth burns like fire.

Fire.

Panic starts at my toes and slowly works its way to my belly, dancing around with dread then snaking its way and clamping around my heart, making it beat a million miles a minute. My breathing picks up to try to accommodate my increased pulse, but my exhausted body can’t handle it. I want to run, but my feet feel like they are blocks of ice, so cold, hard, and heavy. By instinct, I attempt to bring my hands between my thighs to feel how much damage was done. That is the only way I can live. I am useless without it. If I am fucked up down there, I might as well murder myself. I can’t survive any other way.

My wrists won’t move and my eyes won’t open. The strength that I thought I lost comes back with vigor. I yank on my hands again, realizing that they are restrained at my sides. Confusion overtakes me while the fight or flight response takes over. My crusted-over eyes open, the bright lights shine heavy above. I let myself scream out in pain, in terror, in so many other things.

“Shh, little girl. You fine! Please!” the Polish woman croons to me, stroking my forehead.

I don’t believe her. People lie. Real, good, genuine people don’t exist. People only pretend to be nice when they want something. Then they fuck you and leave you for dead.

My dizzy stare meets hers, but I can’t make anything out clearly. My head is confused and my eyes are those of a drunken person. I can’t focus as I try to release my wrists. I let out another blood-curdling scream, feeling the roughness in the back of my throat puncture and bleed. My eyes water and I cry. I cry out loud for someone that doesn’t exist. Someone that will save me. Someone that will love me. Someone that will understand me.

I don’t even love me.

I hear a Spanish man cursing in the background.

Is it him? Is it my savior? Has he come to save me?

I let silent tears escape my eyes because I do not care anymore. If I were to find death in a second, it would be great by me. The Polish doctor is yelling, but I can’t make out what is happening around me.

Fire. Burn, kisa. Burn, bitch!

Pavel dances around my distorted mind like the devil that I don’t wish to see. I scream out again, thrashing around in insanity and pain, praying for some solace to find me, but alone I lay.

Confused.

Isolated.

Aching.

And broken beyond repair.

“Lettie, calm down,” an unfamiliar man says to me.

I try to make out his face, but the tears in my eyes are thick. I only see a shadow. Part of me wants to believe that he won’t hurt me, but believing only causes pain. Pain causes sorrow. Sorrow causes death. Bring the goodbye. Bring my death.

My tears don’t cease. I am hoping for a reason for the man to strike me. Maybe I will end up like my mother, gashed open and gone. Forgotten. Surviving was the ultimate cruelty. I wanted to let go, but my body wouldn’t let me. I hate myself. I hate myself so much.

“Versed! Now!” the man calls out.

“Lettie, you be okay. You relax a bit, okay?” Why is she calling me Lettie? I’m Svetlana, not Lettie!

“No! No! No!” I yell, shaking my head from side to side, still trying to make out my surroundings. Everything is a jumbled mess. I can’t understand what is happening to me.

The rush of something cool makes its way up my arm and I relax into the softness.
Is this a bed I am lying on? Ahh, a bed. They don’t have beds where I come from.

Cool weightlessness fills me. My tears slow, they never stop fully, but slow enough for me calm down and not fear the second before the other. I am lost, that much is true. There are too many things happening around me, but the lady gave me drugs to make me not care.

“Lettie?” the man bites out, calling me by a name I don’t understand.

I open my eyes and see a rugged, familiar man before me. But he isn’t
him
. He doesn’t even exude the same kind of power and softness that Mr. Dark and Dangerous did. He is different. So very different. He makes me feel unsure, but I have a feeling I don’t have choice in the matter.

Clarity finds me as his black eyes meet mine.

“Doctor, you have been dismissed.”

A sly grin emerges on his stubbled face. He rubs his chin pensively.

“Mateo, she just…”

“Fuck off. Get out.”

The steps echo until they are absent. Mateo starts walking toward me, taking his bottom lip between his teeth. I want haziness to find me again, because something about this seems wrong, so wrong, but something in my belly tells me I would enjoy it.

“Lettie,” he whispers.

I lick my lips because words don’t find me often. I blink to make myself stay awake as the faint feeling of sleepiness hangs in the background.

“I will watch over you now,” he says, grabbing his belt buckle and popping it free.

I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry. He continues to walk over to me until his hand reaches the stark white sheet. He slowly peels it away. I try to move my hands up to cover myself, but I remain restrained. His rough hands make their way to the top of my plain gown and he peels it down, leaving me bare breasted before him.

“Oh, fuck. So sweet. So fucking sweet. May I have a taste, Lettie?”

I try to tell him no, but I can’t speak. I feel myself slipping away back into a sleep that I do not wish for. Then he smiles, making my stomach dance to life again, making me understand that I am not broken. Maybe I do want him. No, no, this is wrong. He rubs his pink tongue over his plump lips while grasping his crotch.

“Oh, that’s right,” he pauses with a laugh, “You couldn’t tell me no even if you wanted.”

His hand reaches out, tickling the goose-bumps on my breast. I try to moan, but I am becoming paralyzed by the drug that was injected into my vein minutes ago. Clarity grasped for moments, only to be lost once again. Mateo bends his mouth down to my ear, flicking his tongue onto my earlobe.

“Don’t worry, niña. We can play dead dolly. I won’t tell anyone.”

His lips press themselves onto my neck, then down onto my breast until my nipple is in his mouth. His free hand takes my other breast and I am at the mercy of another. What will it take to be delivered to graciousness again? One day of goodness is all that I want, but my body responds. Takes it. Wants it deep down to its fucked up bones.

Then, like a welcome friend, I am consumed by a black void. The impoverished princess who was thrown into the fire was rescued, only to be delivered to evil once more.